by L M Krier
The afternoon was nearly over when they got back to the station, so Ted called the team together to update them on progress so far.
'I don't reckon Anne Angus as a suspect at all at this stage,' he told them. 'She's petite, smaller than me, and her feet are small. I'd need a lot of convincing to imagine her kicking a man's head in while wearing big, steel-capped boots. What we desperately need now, Océane, is a lead to the two other people Waters had arranged to meet.'
'It's what I've been working on, boss, amongst finding out what else was on his phone and laptop. I was lucky with the Angus woman. I've not yet been lucky with the other two. Waters had been in contact with all three for a week or so before his visit up here, clearly keen to set something up.
'What I need to do next is to run a reverse image search, using their avatars from the various sites. Anne Angus's was a dog, at least the other two are humans, although one is just a rather suggestive mouth with very full lips. That way I can find out where else they pop up and I may get more of a lead out of that. If not, I've got a few more ideas.'
'Boss, I've got up-to-date photos of Duncan Waters on my phone now, from the family. I'll get them printed out. Needless to say, it looks nothing like his photo on the sites. And Jason Waters is in the clear. Wrong size feet, and he was in a job interview on Monday. One of those all-day ones, where they get all the candidates together at the same time to observe their interaction, then interview them one by one, so he has plenty of witnesses,' Megan Jennings said.
'Just on the off-chance, I checked on the younger boy, too. Ben. He was certainly seething with enough hate to do it, if nothing else. This was all just in conversation, you understand, I was simply chatting to them. He's a cross-country runner, on a local team, and they had a special training session on Monday afternoon which he had permission from his school to attend. That will effectively alibi the uncle as well as he drove him there because his dad was away and his mother doesn't drive. I'll phone Southampton and get someone to discreetly check out those alibis for us.'
'Excellent, Megan, thank you. Right, time to call it a day for today. Tomorrow, we'll sort out who goes round with the photos to where he'd set up his meets, and further afield, to see if we can pin his movements down more precisely. I want to know more about the man at the bar, if that was our victim, and about the other man, who followed him out. Someone may well remember something.
'And don't forget, The Grapes for a quick one, or two, after work tomorrow. I don't have to remind you to be sensible about who's driving. Good work so far, everyone. See you all tomorrow.'
Chapter Eight
DC Megan Jennings was the last to arrive for the Friday morning briefing, erupting through the door in a breathless flurry of apologies, although she was only two minutes past the appointed time.
'So sorry, boss,' she panted. 'Felix is convinced we have a visiting fox in the garden, and I couldn't prise him away to school until he'd been all round putting out bowls of food and clean water for it. I'll make sure it doesn't happen again.'
Ted hid a smile. He liked his officers to be on time, especially working a difficult murder case, but he was amused by the warm pictures of domesticity he was getting from Megan. He also appreciated her sincerity in apologising.
'It's fine. Just try not to let it affect your work. We've got a wily fox of our own to catch,' he said dryly. 'Before I forget, we need to sort out DNA from the family, to eliminate traces of them from the victim's hotel room.'
'Already sorted, boss,' Megan replied, taking off her coat and sitting down at her desk. 'I mentioned to them that it would be necessary, and when I spoke to Southampton I asked them to sort it out, soon as. I thought it might be slightly more tactful, doing it that way, as they're not really prime suspects. I hope that was all right, boss? I should have checked first.'
She always seemed so eager and anxious to please. But then Ted knew who her previous senior officer had been and could understand why. Not someone who gave praise or credit, even when it was well earned, and who ran the team on a blame culture. Not Ted's style at all.
'That's fine, Megan, I think that's probably exactly how I would've handled it myself. They're not in the frame at the moment, so you did the right thing,' he reassured her and saw her obvious sigh of relief. He wondered what it must be like to work on a team where you were always expecting to get a bollocking for everything you did or didn't do.
'Right, this morning's task is to pin down as much as we can of our Mr Waters' last movements. Mike, you assign who goes where, but this is what I want covering. I want further statements from all the staff at the hotel about if and when anyone saw him, either going out or coming back in on the night he was killed. If you've already asked, ask again. Jog memories. We need to know.
'Océane, can you tell us the times and locations of his dates and any detail at all you've got so far on who he was meeting, please?'
'Right you are, boss,' she said, looking up from her computer. 'First off, Anne Forfar, or Anne Angus as we now know she is actually called. They were supposed to meet in the pub at six-thirty. Then at seven, in the same bar, he was supposed to be meeting a woman who calls herself Linda Lovelace, but I think we can be fairly certain that's not her real name. She's the one who's all mouth in her avatar.'
There were some blank looks from the younger members of the team so Jezza, their walking edition of Trivial Pursuit, supplied helpfully, 'Linda Lovelace. Former porn star. Starred in Deep Throat in, I think, from memory, 1972.'
The longer-serving members of the team all knew that Jezza's general knowledge came from her need to answer the incessant questions of her autistic younger brother, Tom. Mike Hallam gaped at her and asked incredulously, 'Surely your Tommy hasn't been asking you about Deep Throat?'
Jezza chuckled. 'Don't forget Tommy doesn't recognise the same social boundaries as most people. If he sees or hears something, he asks me about it, whatever it is.'
There was general laughter before Ted brought them back to order. 'All right, focus, please. Who was number three, Océane?'
'Number three is the famous Snookybunnyface, and that really is all I have on her for now, if it is a woman. They've exchanged a lot of steamy emails, though I have to say that Linda's are the most graphic when she replies to any of them. Snookybunnyface usually signs herself off as just Snooks. They were due to meet in the next pub along the road, at seven-thirty.
'I have nothing much to go on yet, just a partial face photo and yes, it is a blonde, with long hair, but it may not be her. I'm trying a reverse image search to see where else it crops up, in the hopes of finding her on social media or somewhere, under her real name. The problem is that a lot of these sites offer protection for personal details so you can't always do that, but I'll keep trying.
'And I take it we are going to look at any street CCTV from around the pubs in question? Is that one for me? Steve is certainly more than capable of doing it.'
'I'm in this weekend, sir, I could do that, free up Océane for other stuff?' Steve supplied helpfully.
'Good, Steve, do it. Start today, if time allows. We need it all checking,' Ted told him, watching him blush furiously at the acknowledgement from Océane.
'Just another thing, boss,' Océane continued. 'The victim had no phone contact at all with the Linda Lovelace person, only email. I haven't yet read through all their smutty messages, but their contact and the arrangement to meet were all by email only. And Linda's were all from throwaway mail addresses. Literally. A different address every time, though the same name. A nightmare to trace. Luckily the victim was in phone contact with Snooks, so we have her number, at least.'
'I could get in touch with her, boss,' Jezza suggested eagerly. 'Give her a call, or send her a text, claiming we'd met somewhere. Try to fix up a meeting?'
Ted shook his head firmly. 'Too risky yet, on too many counts. Not least of which because it could be seen as entrapment, as you well know, which needs clearance. There's no sense in us slipping up thi
s early on so we can't even take the case to court once we find our murderer. And we don't know for sure that this Snooky is a woman. She could be a man, and our murderer. We'll have to think of another way forward for now. I'd need to get permission from on high for anything like that.'
'Boss, someone needs to go through all the exchanges between the victim and the people he met. I can print them out, but that's a job anyone can do, whereas if you want me to dig out his innermost computer secrets, that isn't,' Océane put in.
Once again, it could have sounded arrogant, but Ted knew she was right.
'That's one for the weekend, if we're quiet. I'll be coming in myself at some point, so I can do some of it. Right, so, for now, we need to take Mr Waters' photo, the correct one, from pub to pub, see if we can't pin down his movements. We also need to trawl through all the witness statements looking for anything to help us, and picking out questions that still need to be asked.
'If you sort out people for those, Mike, I think, on reflection, maybe Jo and I should pay a visit to the hotel. Perhaps a bit of rank might rattle them into remembering. I can't believe no one saw or heard anything. They may just need a bit of prodding to realise what they can remember.
'Jo, I just need to go and chase the Super up about court orders for email providers, if that's even a possibility, and see if we can't get a trace of Snooky from her phone number, too. Then I'll be right with you.'
'Ah, Ted. Coffee?' It was taking some time for Ted to get used to the newly informal meetings between him and the Ice Queen. He nodded and sat down as she continued, 'How are your new team members shaping up?'
'Good choices, ma...' he so nearly called her ma'am. It was still deeply engrained. He couldn't yet quite bring himself to call her Debs all the time. 'Océane is very impressive. She's already found out a lot of useful information for us,' he said, giving her the details so far.
'What are your early theories? I'm hoping there are no indications so far that this is something other than an isolated killing?'
'I'm a big believer in Occam's razor. I try to keep assumptions to the bare minimum. But the most obvious ones to draw are that either someone knew what Mr Waters was like and was exacting extreme punishment on him, perhaps on behalf of the family. Or that the husband or partner of one of the people he had arranged to meet had intercepted his messages and killed him in jealous rage.
'That's why we really need authority to follow up on the owners of the email addresses. Even Océane is struggling at the moment to find out who Snookybunnyface is, not to mention Linda Lovelace. We need Snooky's identity from her mobile phone number.'
'I will push for it, as hard as I can, but you know these things take time,' she reminded him.
Jo Rodriguez was talking on the phone when Ted went back up to his inspector's office. Mike was in the main office, assigning tasks. To Ted's surprise, Jo was speaking in Spanish and the rapid-fire conversation sounded heated. Ted didn't understand a word of it. Jo made an apologetic face at him and clearly wound the conversation up as fast as he could, then rang off.
'Sorry, boss,' he said apologetically. 'The wife is Spanish, too. She was just reminding me what shopping to pick up on the way home tonight.'
Ted laughed. 'That was a shopping list conversation? I'd hate to hear you having a full-blown argument, in that case. Right, let's you and me go and see if we can jog some memories at the hotel. Are you happy to drive?'
It was a good opportunity to get to know the team member he'd be leaving in charge whenever he had to move to another division to head up an enquiry there. Ted was a keen observer of people and felt it was often possible to tell a great deal about someone's character by how they drove. Jo's style was definitely hot-blooded and flamboyant. He kept within the speed limit, just, but he was clearly a risk taker and some of his language got a bit colourful. Ted noticed he had a gold canine tooth, which gave him something of a rakish air. Mildly, he asked him to tone down the language and was met with profuse apologies.
'I just like to keep it respectful, within the team. Wouldn't want standards to slip when I'm away and you're in charge,' Ted said, then was interrupted by his mobile phone. He groaned as he looked at the caller display.
'Alastair! I was just thinking I should phone you,' he began, holding up crossed fingers towards Jo to cover the white lie. 'I know we haven't been able to give you much at the moment, but I will send something your way, just as soon as I can.'
Ted ended the call as quickly as he decently could, then grinned guiltily at Jo. 'All right, you caught me out. I'm not keen on the press, and that was our local reporter. Everyone calls him Pocket Billiards. I'll leave it to your imagination as to why.'
Jo was still laughing when they arrived at the hotel and he parked his car. Once inside, Ted was able to see his new DI in full-on charm offensive and he had to admit, it was impressive. With his ready smile and a flash of the gold tooth, people seemed to warm to him and were happy to talk.
They didn't get much further forward, although the young woman on reception did tell Jo that Duncan Waters was openly flirting with her when she gave him his key-card on arrival. Ted didn't recall having seen that in any of the witness statements to date.
'He was a bit of a charmer, like you,' she laughed, in the face of a cheeky wink and another flash of the gold tooth from Jo.
'Well, he certainly won't be charming anyone else, eh, boss?' Jo commented, as they drove back to the station. 'Let's hope Océane can find out who these other two women are before too long, then we can at least interview them. I must say, she's certainly very hot…' he left a suggestive pause before adding, 'with a computer.'
'And strictly off limits,' Ted warned him dryly. 'Another thing I'm not at all keen on is office romances between team members. It has a nasty habit of getting in the way of police work.'
'Me, boss?' Jo was all wide-eyed innocence. 'A good married Catholic boy with six kids? When do you think I'd have the time? Or the energy?'
There was some degree of progress by the end of the day, when the team members came back in to report, before gathering in The Grapes.
'Boss, we got a positive ID on our man in the first pub. The bar staff remembered him hanging around and checking his watch. One of the young women said he was trying to chat her up. They also remember Anne Angus. Working in a pub, I suppose they get good at identifying someone who's been stood up on a blind date. She stood out a bit as she ordered a St Clement's and it's rather old-fashioned these days,' Mike Hallam told them. In response to some blank looks, he told them, 'Orange juice and bitter lemon.
'They confirm she didn't follow our man out when he left. She'd ordered food and stayed to eat that. One of the bar staff thinks they saw another man leave just after him but the description doesn't help us much at all. Medium height, medium build, darkish hair. Wearing a dark fleece with some sort of a logo on it. It's not much to go on. She only remembered him because he'd sat nursing half a pint for quite some time, watching everyone who came in.'
'We picked up the trail of our man at the next pub, boss,' Rob took up the story. 'One of the bar staff recognised his photo and said he came in about half seven. It wasn't very busy at that time, so he remembered. He said the man bought a drink then went to a table where there was a woman with blonde hair who had clearly been waiting for someone.
'Our man went over to her, said something, then sat down with her. The same barman said there was a lot of very hot and steamy body language going on. They just had a quick bar snack and seemed in a hurry to leave. He said they left some time before nine o'clock. He didn't specifically notice anyone else leaving at the same time or hanging around watching, but he said they were starting to get busy by then.'
'Excellent, that's a good start. Any description of the woman? Did they know her?'
'The barman didn't know her, although he's seen her around before. And yes, a description,' Rob hesitated, knowing what a stickler the boss was for respect. 'Don't shoot the messenger, boss, not my words, and
I'll paraphrase them a bit. He said she was short, blonde, curvy, gobby and he compared a certain part of her anatomy to a large round fruit.'
Even Ted had trouble keeping a straight face at that. 'Right, well, that's a start. Océane, anything new from your side?'
'Negative on Linda Lovelace. The name is all I've got to go on so far for her and it's not advancing me very far at the moment. Snookybunnyface did attach a coy photo to one of her emails but it's artful stuff, you can only see an eye and part of a cheek and I'm betting they aren't hers anyway. It's similar, but not quite the same, as the one she uses on the dating site. The best I've come up with so far, in trying to find her anywhere online, is a 'Snooks' who's joined a group for former students of a school here but hasn't posted anything yet.'
'So can one of us join the same group and try to strike up conversation with her, try to draw her out and find who she is?' Jezza asked.
Océane answered, as it was her domain. 'Theoretically, yes. But I'm CFI on this so it's me who has to prepare the report to say what information we obtained and how it was sourced. There could be ethical issues with an idea like that, and I imagine, boss, it would have to be cleared from higher up?'
Ted nodded then stood up from where he was, as usual, perched on the edge of a desk.
'Right, let's wrap it up for today and adjourn to The Grapes. I hope everyone's able to come? Steve, is Maurice coming?'
'Probably already there, sir, you know him. He's not drinking at the moment, though, because of his medication.'
Maurice Brown was indeed already there, so was Jim Baker, the former Big Boss and now the officer in charge of Ted's newly expanded team. Ted hadn't seen Maurice for nearly a month and was astonished at the change in him since his operation. He'd been trying to lose weight for some time and had clearly finally succeeded. He looked much better for it.
